If you’re looking for an activity that’s fun, engaging, and that covers a lot of educational learning, this one is great. The supply list is really basic too, so you can pull it all together in just a few minutes using items you have around the house or classroom.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Materials Needed
- White paper to make the letters on
- Some type of food (dried beans, grapes, crackers, carrots, blueberries or any other food)
- A printout of the Alphabet chart and Checklist that you can print and have nearby for your child to use as a reference.
- For younger children, it can be helpful to use this printout of alphabet outlines, where they have a printed letterform to work on top of.
- Optional: A large white piece of paper or board to work on, this helps with taking great pictures if you want to submit your alphabet to the Food Font project!
- Optional: Use this detailed Food Font Alphabet Directions file for instructions and tips of how to create a food alphabet, if you want more information or photography tips.
Skill building and learning
This activity is full of teaching and learning opportunities!
- Fine motor: moving and arranging food
- Co-ordination: arranging letters onto paper in the lines of a letter
- Concentration: putting food into letter forms
- Literacy: letter recognition and formation
Directions
- Make sure that you have a alphabet checklist nearby, so that your child can refer to the letters when making letterforms.
- To get started, you can try using veggie sticks, potato sticks and/or pretzel pieces to make letters. Your child can use the pieces as is or bite them into shape. Make sure you have your alphabet chart around for reference.You also can use other foods, like carrots, dried beans, grapes, crackers, or other food around the kitchen. (or even candy canes!)
- As you make each letter, you can have your child sound out the letter. You can also talk about what things start with the letter. (What starts with the letter O?)
Participate in Food Font
If you want to participate in Food Font and submit the alphabet that you make, you can take pictures of each letter as you do the activity.
- Set your camera to the high quality JPEG setting.
- Take a picture of each letter from a bird’s eye view (directly above the letter.)
- When you are done making your alphabet, submit the images to the Food Font project. We will edit the images, and they can become part of the Food Font alphabet gallery!
Class Activity Ideas
If you are a teacher, there are many ways to do this activity in a reading, science, writing, social studies, English or health class.
- Create an alphabet out of beans, a vegetable, or other food and discuss where the food comes from and the nutritional value
- Create an alphabet out of vegetables grown in the school garden.
- Create two alphabets. One out of “healthy food” and one out of “unhealthy food.”
- Create an alphabet out of school lunch food.
- Create an alphabet of food grown or made in the local area and discuss what local food is and its impact.
